Category Archives: Dealer Sites & Carts

In this blog we talk a lot about localization. Technology allows us to know where a consumer is geographically when they’re reading an online ad and, much like your local newspaper, we can feed an ad loaded with information about a local dealer for a specific brand. Not much of a shock to anyone’s system.

Beyond localization is customizing the online ad based on your surfing history. Showing ads based on information from tracking where you’ve been on the site you’re on or even other sites you’ve been too. That’s behavioral marketing and can make people a little nervous.

So, before the FTC rushes in and regulates the industry the advertising industry has come up with a first step to inform consumers why they are seeing a specific ad. Here’s a mock-up taken from an article in The New York Times.

The idea is that you’ll click on the “i” icon and go to a page that explains why you are seeing this ad, assure you that they really don’t know much about you and allow you to fine tune or opt-out of the program.

No one thinks this is the only step that needs to be taken but it is a first step. And, I haven’t read about anyone predicting how consumers will react to this message.

A few weeks ago we reported on Google’s version of the same idea on their search site and that most consumers were indifferent or even modified the settings to improve the customization of the ads. However, just because it works on a search site and one that is as well known as Google doesn’t mean it will work everywhere on the internet.

Anyone concerned about advertising on a local level is interested in the survival of newspapers. Will the print edition go away? Will they go completely online? How do we best reach local consumers?

If you have a Kindle or you’re going to buy the iPad, you’ve noticed that they offer subscriptions to newspapers, delivered right to your device. For example, The Boston Globe is available for only $9.99 a month. Are e-readers the way for newspapers to charge for content while saving on printing and distribution costs? Is this the way for newspapers to survive?

Here’s the problem, e-readers all have wireless connections to the internet, they have browsers built-in (Kindle has lousy browser while iPad from I’ve heard has a great browser) where the information for The Boston Globe is only a click away and it’s free. So, why would I pay for a subscription?

As long as e-readers have internet connections, I don’t see how they are any different than trying to sell me an online subscription to my local newspaper. And so far, that idea isn’t working to well as this post from Slashdot about a newspaper on Long Island confirms. After three months they only sold 35, $5 per month subscriptions.

As the Internet matures brand managers are starting to understand the need to connect consumers from their brand site to their local dealer to complete the sale. And, most often the first step should be to the dealer’s site, since the consumer is already online.

Unfortunately, most dealer locators link the consumer to the dealer’s own site which is often out of date, certainly not brand compliant and, way too often, loaded with competitive information. Or, the dealer locator results aren’t much more than a white page listing giving address and phone number, not a very helpful next step to a sale.

Dealer microsites solve the problem by providing a site for every dealer that combines product information with local information and looks like the brand site.

This solves the problem for your dealer locator as you can let a consumer learn more about your local dealer and even see any local promotions.

It solves another problem too, that is, the dealers hate to link to a brand site because it has a dealer locator that shows nearby competitors and often times shows products and product categories the dealer doesn’t carry. With a dealer microsite the dealer now has a place to link the consumer knowing that he is protected.

A good dealer microsite program is a win for the brand, for the dealer and the consumer. These sites make for great Google landing pages, too.

Overall, newspapers and magazine advertisements are the favorites with online advertisements coming in second.

When you look at age preference from 18 to 44 then online wins the contest with newspapers and magazine advertisements coming in second. The study also shows online advertisements are more popular with college graduates over newspapers and magazines.

The real takeaway from this report is that you can’t keep online out of your media plans anymore and you have to help your independent dealers get into the game.

Many brand managers get it and we’re seeing more and more demand for things like local Google Adwords or banner ads builders in RFPs for ad builders.

A recent article in The New York Times explains how they are going to begin charging for consumers to have access to their online edition in 2011.

They didn’t give pricing or delve into many specifics but they at least gave us their strategy and it sounds like a good idea and, if successful, I’m sure many other cash starved newspapers will follow their lead.

The basic plan is that you will be allowed X number of articles you can read per month for free and after you hit that number you’ll be asked to pay a fee for unlimited access. That’s a good idea for several reasons. One is that it should keep their online readership numbers up and online advertisers happy. Then, over time they’ll lower and lower that number of free articles to slowly charge us more and more. No big shock to consumers or advertisers as they control the pain.

This is a much better than their previous attempt where they charged for columns written by their best editorial writers. All that did was keep us from reading their best articles.

The basic takeaway is that newspapers have hit bottom and are going to finally figure out ways to succeed economically and therefore remain an important part of local advertising for those of us concerned about retail advertising. And, we have to provide dealers with tools that will help them advertise in both the print and online editions of newspapers for many years to come. Maybe the worst is almost over for the newspaper industry. Thank goodness.

The good news is that the most popular reason is the same as it is for why they go to Google. Consumers are looking for your products, price, promotion and service. And, most often service means a local retailer.

Recently we’ve seen several RFPs for our Ad Builder that go beyond allowing retailers to build newspaper ads and other traditional media to requesting functionality for building digital outputs.

Banner ad landing pages, Google landing pages and more are very popular and it may not be long before you’ll also want your retailers to be able to build fan pages that you can link consumers too.

The technology is changing but the consumers want the same old things. They want to know about your product, its price, are there any promotions and where can they buy it and who will service it.

That they are looking for those things online is a good thing because it’s actually much easier to deliver this information online than via traditional media.

According to a new report from comScore almost 31 billion videos were viewed in November of 2009 and Google properties far outdistanced everyone.

Some other key points from the study are:

The takeaway for all brand managers is to get more video onto your site, your dealer sites and your dealer promotional pages as soon as you can.

Way back in 1996 we learned that consumers don’t compare your site to your competitors, they compare you to the entire internet. Well, if 84.8% of the entire internet audience viewed online video last month you can rest assured that consumers are expecting to see more lively presentations than what flat html pages are delivering.

At this year’s CES, Intel introduced WiDi (Wireless Display Interface) and Netgear launched their receiver called Push2TV. Here’s Netgear’s diagram that explains how if your computer has WiDi, you can push your online video to a TV screen wirelessly.

This technology will be available in a few weeks and over time will help revolutionize local advertising.

The reason it will change national and local advertising is that the more screens people are watching where we know their physical location, the better we’re going to be at connecting the national advertising message to the local dealer. This may eventually lessen the need for some dealers to advertise locally because the national ad will link to their local site.

Just like Google local where a person is searching for a set of tires, because they’re online Google knows with a great degree of accuracy where that computer is located and can position local ads for the dealer in that market.

Well, if consumers are watching “24” on hulu and pushing it to their TV screen we will be able to add local information to a national ad that will connect the consumer to the local dealer.

Push2TV, mobile, Internet-enabled TV, Google Local Search and more are dramatically set to change the future of local advertising as brands can combine their branding message with local content. This will save millions of dollars in adverting expenditures while improving the consumer experience. All good things for brands, dealers and consumers.

As the internet becomes more localized (because of all that is happening with local search, mobile and even local twitter) brands have to keep pace and deliver local information to consumers or risk losing their interest.

Here’s one way to deliver regional promotions and promotions for specific dealers economically.

Some promotions aren’t national and therefore can’t be a part of your brand site, but all is not lost if you have a robust dealer microsite system. With dealer microsites you’re in position to quickly publish regional or dealer promotions based on the dealer’s sales level or by the products they carry.

Link to these mircosites from your dealer locator and you have your own internet advertising network that reaches thousands of your most likely prospects daily, without any publication costs.

With a good online admin tool, dealers will be able to enter their own promotions giving your customers even more compelling reasons to head for your best dealers.

Once this system is in place, it will work beyond your dealer locator, too. These dynamically generated pages can become landing pages for Google local adword campaigns, email efforts and even Facebook dealer fan pages.

Mobile, GPS Twitter, Google Local Adwords and more have the World Wide Web morphing into the Local Narrow Web where consumers are looking online for friends, movies, dinner, products and services in their neighborhood. Brand sites have to get better at local information to show local price, local dealer location and local promotions or risk disappointing your most likely customers.

In many instances, the trip from the dealer locator to the store is made way too difficult. How many times have you found a product on a brand site, and then linked from there to a dealer site, that only links back to the original brand site where you started? We call it the circle of confusion.

Because dealers don’t have the tools to put good data on their site, they simply link to your brand site. You send the consumer to the dealer site, they send the poor guy back and so it goes and goes.

Or worse, you send the consumer to the dealer’s site where they find competitive information and get what they want somewhere else.

Or, you just give the consumer the street address and maybe a map to the dealer’s store which isn’t any more friendly then the old fashion yellow pages and may be even less effective as the consumer will continue to search online elsewhere for better information.

The solution is fairly easy. Build microsites for your best dealers and link to them in your dealer locator. Let the dealer use an online tool to customize and update the information. Now, the consumer gets product information, price, local promotion and place to buy, all on one page. Also use these microsites as Google landing pages, Facebook Fan Pages, email links and more.